There were reports of covid like cases on US military bases, in France and Italy after the October 18th World Military games in Wuhan. This for sure fueled the spread.
Scores of athletes from other nations, including France and Italy, who participated in the games reported symptoms consistent with COVID-19 upon their return to their home countries. In retrospect, some doctors said those athletes suffered from COVID-19 and in some cases infected others, according to news reports.
link:https://prospect.org/api/content/96bc9e4c-ba52-11ea-b2f8-1244d5f7c7c6/
YZ, thanks so much for finding and posting this! I remember reading something similar about France AND UK having tested old samples from November 2019 and finding positives. Then it disappeared and no amount of googling could make it re-appear. V. happy (intellectually, not emotionally) to see this.
There is a well documented study by the a University in Spain, which takes frequent sewage water samples, showing they found Covid-19 in their waste water in March of 2019.
https://www.ub.edu/web/ub/en/menu_eines/noticies/2020/06/042.html
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-spain-science-idUSKBN23X2HQ
Isn’t that curious? If the virus was in Spain in March 2019, why did it take almost a year to spread among the population?
Also, if Covid was spreading mid-2019 around the world, how then did Australia and New Zealand’s lockdowns manage to initially eliminate it?
Crickets I think this is a really important question.